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Wednesday, November 26, 2014

1st Thanksgiving: Natives broke bread with immigrants

GOP on Wrong Side of History on Immigration

At the first Thanksgiving 383 years
ago, Native Americans and Pilgrim immigrants gathered with mutual
respect to share a bountiful harvest they’d produced together.

This Thanksgiving, though, there’s no respect or sharing in the homes of GOP nativists.

Suffering amnesia about their personal histories, nativist Republicans want to expel the 11.7 million unauthorized immigrants,
the people who harvest America’s Thanksgiving vegetables and care for
America’s toddlers and grannies. The GOP has threatened to sue, shut
down the government and impeach President Obama to punish him for
issuing an executive order giving fewer than half of the nation’s
undocumented workers a limited ability to remain in the United States.

It disqualifies new undocumented immigrants. Anyone who has entered
the United States recently or who enters now without authorization is
excluded. The order is limited as well. It lasts only as long as Obama
is president. The next executive could continue it. Or kill it.

If such a program had been in place 14 years ago, actress Diane Guerrero, who plays Maritza Ramos on the show Orange is the New Black, would have been spared separation from her parents and brother. Guerrero described her family’s deportation in an op-ed
in the Los Angeles Times earlier this month. She was just 14 when she
arrived home from school to find lights on, dinner started but her
family missing.

Born in the United States, Guerrero was a citizen. Her parents and
brother were not. Neighbors broke the news to her that the INS had
seized her family and would deport them to civil war-torn Colombia. In
the op-ed, Guerrero pleaded for relief for families like hers. President
Obama provided it. Thank goodness.

Immigrants like Guerrero’s family don’t enter the United States to
take. Like everyone who has has arrived on America’s shores since that
first Thanksgiving, these new émigrés work to give their children a
better life. Some young undocumented workers today labor to give their
parents in Mexico remittances that enable them to survive after NAFTA
destroyed their ability to eke out a living from subsistence farms.
Americans respect those family values.

Unauthorized immigrants are lured into the United States by the
promise of jobs, whether it’s making hotel beds, washing cars or picking
produce. Employers want their labor. Farmers who rely on the
backbreaking work of unauthorized immigrants found themselves with produce rotting in the fields after some states passed anti-immigration laws in recent years.

As Americans bow their heads before passing the turkey platter this
week, they should know that President Obama’s executive order is a
blessing to native born citizens as well as immigrants. A study by the Bipartisan Policy Center found that immigration reform is good for the economy, while inaction is destructive.

The task force that produced the study, co-chaired by former
governors from both parties, said immigration reform would be a powerful
instrument of economic revitalization: “The results make clear that
reform has the potential to significantly increase the number of young,
working-age people in the economy. This influx of labor would spur
economic growth, reduce federal deficits, help the housing sector and
mitigate the effects of an aging population. By contrast, preventing
unauthorized immigration without providing replacement labor would cause
severe damage to the economy.”

In addition, reform means immigrants no longer need fear deportation
for reporting violations such as wage theft, perilous working conditions
and workplace violence. This protects native-born workers because
employers who become accustomed to impunity for illegal exploitation of
immigrants quickly attempt to abuse all workers.

While unauthorized immigrants have long prayed for reform, 57 percent
of native born Americans now believe those entreaties should be
answered. The number is higher – 74 percent– if reform includes a path
to citizenship, fines, back taxes and background checks.

But a president’s power is limited, and Obama stopped short extending
citizenship. That’s the responsibility of Congress. President Obama
asked lawmakers to act: “Scripture tells us, we shall not oppress a
stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger. We were strangers once,
too.”

During the holidays four years ago, she recounted, a young man who
had just finished boot camp and was on his way to deployment in Iraq
called her for help. He’d just learned that his father had been detained
by the INS. On Christmas Eve, the soldier lost his father to
deportation, and his family lost a breadwinner.

That is not how Native Americans treated the strangers who arrived on
the shores of Plymouth. Those Native Americans broke bread with the
immigrants.

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